Surgical procedures requiring cutting of tissue can cause bleeding at the site of the cutting. Various techniques have been adapted to control bleeding with varying degrees of success such as, for example, suturing, applying clips to blood vessels, and stapling, as well as electrocautery and other tissue heating techniques. Advances in tissue joining or welding, tissue repair and wound closure also have permitted surgical procedures previously not possible or too risky.
Surgical staplers have been used for tissue security, joining, and approximation, and to provide hemostasis in conjunction with tissue cutting. Such devices include, for example, linear and circular cutting and stapling instruments.
Typically, a linear cutter has parallel rows of staples with a slot for a cutting means to travel between the rows of staples. This type of surgical stapler secures tissue for improved cutting, joins layers of tissue, and provides hemostasis by applying parallel rows of staples to layers of surrounding tissue as the cutting means cuts between the parallel rows. Hemostasis is used herein to mean generally the arresting of bleeding including by coagulation, cauterization and/or tissue joining or welding.
Devices using heating elements have been described, for example, to heat surgical cutting blades to provide hemostasis when cutting tissue with a blade. This type of device provides only limited control of tissue manipulation, coagulation, and/or thermal damage.
It is therefore desirable to provide a surgical device with a hemostatic heating element which provides control of tissue heating or treatment within a controlled zone.